FAQ

Virtual therapy is therapy conducted over the telephone, messaging services, or video conferencing. It can be a convenient way to seek mental health services without having to leave your home. That’s a win for those who don’t like to drive or sit in traffic! Oftentimes, clients are a bit nervous or skeptical of virtual therapy, but we have heard from so many that once you start working with the therapist, people often forget they are not in-person. In some cases, virtual therapy can even feel safer for some people, especially if you have a comforting pet with you during session.

For the sake of efficiency and security, Family Table Counseling uses a secure, HIPAA-compliant platform to conduct video teletherapy. Other forms of virtual therapy are conducted on a case-by-case basis. Family Table Counseling uses an electronic health records (EHR) platform called Simple Practice, so you can create your own convenient, private portal log-in, manage appointments, and sign documents electronically. As well, our video sessions are typically conducted through this secure platform. It is expected that clients are able to meet for sessions in a private, well-lit area, and that you have a strong internet connection.

Therapy duration and frequency differ from client to client and depend on your needs. Typically, though, clients tend to start out with a 50-minute session once weekly, and you and your therapist can go from there to assess your needs. Your therapy goals and treatment plan mostly dictate the duration, but it is not uncommon that clients work with their therapist for an average of 12-16 sessions.

Therapy is a collaborative process, and as therapists, we tend to ask a lot of questions because we want to get to know you. We take a non-judgmental, empathetic, and curious approach in order to make sure treatment is tailored to your own unique situations. At times and when appropriate, we have found that utilizing creative techniques during sessions like art, music, and play therapy can be beneficial for clients.

An “LMFT” is a licensed marriage and family therapist (MFT). What this actually means is that we are therapists who have extensive training in treating relationships, and treating people in the context of the relationships in their lives. We take a broad view of your world to understand the systems you are a part of (family, school, friends, work, etc) and work to understand how problems exist among and between the internal units (the people) of these systems. From this perspective, we are able to treat a large demographic of people individually, with their partners, or with family.

“BAS, AAMFT-Approved” relate to supervision statuses. A board- approved supervisor oversees the hours and training of other therapy associates who are not yet independently licensed in the state of Texas. An AAMFT Approved Supervisor is an additional designation for MFT-Supervisors that identifies that the supervisor has completed additional education and training requirements that meet AAMFT-standards. AAMFT Approved Supervisor designation is often required by COAMFTE-accredited Marriage and Family Therapy academic programs for supervision of their students.

We are not in network with any insurance panels at this time. In order to provide you and your family the best treatment possible, we have decided not to work within the limitations and restrictions that insurance places upon mental health treatment. Insurance companies require a mental health diagnosis to cover services we provide (which is recorded in your medical record), and that often conflicts with our beliefs that problems exist relationally rather than within a person. Additionally, insurance companies require specific timeframes for sessions, goals, and diagnoses that they consider to be medically necessary, oftentimes which do not work with the treatment of couples and families. We are happy to supply you with a superbill which you can submit to your insurance company for reimbursement of whatever your out-of-network benefits cover, so please let us know if this would be helpful to you.

Not here. We are happy to refer you to medical professionals who specialize in what it is you are needing. While we may have some knowledge and understanding of the medications you may be on, we do not prescribe them ourselves. Therapists often get confused with other professionals like psychiatrists, and we tend to work collaboratively with them a lot, but we are definitely different. If you are looking for a mental health provider who prescribes psychiatric medications, please let us know and we can help you find someone.

We take your confidentiality very seriously. We each have extensive training in and are bound by specific ethical and legal codes to adhere to confidential practices. We keep electronic records in a HIPAA-compliant and secure web-based platform, limit our communications about therapy work to session times, and outside of the legal limits of confidentiality (see informed consent), will not communicate with anyone outside of the therapeutic relationship we have determined together without specific and signed permission to do so.

Give us a shout! We offer free brief consultations before setting up your first appointment, to make sure fit and schedule are appropriate and answer any questions you might have. Call us at 817-303-9374 or fill out the Contact Us form for more information or to request an appointment. You may leave a message for us either way and someone will get back to you as soon as we possibly can, typically within 24 hours.